To volunteer or not to volunteer – that is the question

I became a volunteer Mentor over 4 years ago after being made redundant from my job as a sales manager for a construction company. I had been doing this for over 23 years and loved it, so being made redundant was tough.

I have always felt I should try to embrace change as I have found good things can often come out of bad. I felt I needed to do something to keep my mind active so I decided to give volunteering a try.

Even though I have spent most of my adult working life being in front of people, I was quite daunted at the prospect of going to meet total strangers.

As it turned out I really enjoyed the training and met some really lovely people. My Mentees have been so varied, people from all walks of life, facing a diversity of challenges many of which I had never considered.

I do believe that the people I have encountered have made as much of a difference to me as I hope I have made to them.

I still keep in touch with several of them and meet up with them as time permits as for some strange reason they want to keep in touch with me!

So if you are in any sort of doubt, give it a try. Realise what you can give with your time and see how much you get out of volunteering!